Great Throughts Treasury

"The enemies of living life; outdated little liberals, afraid of their own independence; lackeys of thought, enemies of the person and freedom, decrepit preachers of carrion and rot! What do they have: gray heads, the golden mean, the most abject and philistine giftlessness, envious equality, equality without personal dignity, equality as understood by a lackey or a Frenchman of the year ninety-three...And scoundrells, above all, scoundrels, scoundrels everywhere!"

"The essence of religious feeling does not come under any sort of reasoning or atheism, and has nothing to do with any crimes or misdemeanors. There is something else here, and there will always be something else - something that the atheists will forever slur over; they will always be talking of something else."

"The execution of the deed is sometimes masterfully done, in the most ingenious fashion, yet the control of the individual actions that comprise it, the origin of those actions, is diffuse and is associated with various morbid sensations. Rather like a dream."

"The extraordinary craving for someone faithful and devoted, which unaccountably and suddenly came over him."

"The fact of the matter is that smart ordinary people, even if only in passing, and imagined myself (and probably in all my life) a man of genius and originality, yet keeps in his heart worm of doubt, which leads up to what a clever man commits sometimes utter despair, but if and submits, it is a completely poisoned drove inside the vanity. However, in any case, we have taken extreme: in the vast majority of this clever bit of people it happens at all so tragic, really spoils the end of the year the liver, more or less, that's all."

"The fear of appearances is the first symptom of impotence."

"The first category is always the man of the present, the second the man of the future. The first preserve the world and people it, the second move the world and lead it to its goal."

"The flood will bear you to the bank and set you safe on your feet again."

"The formula ‘two and two make five’ is not without its attractions."

"The general never regretted his early marriage, or regarded it as a foolish youthful escapade; and he so respected and feared his wife that he was very near loving her."

"The genuine realist, if he is an unbeliever, will always find strength and ability to disbelieve in the miraculous, and if he is confronted with a miracle as an irrefutable fact he would rather disbelieve his own senses than admit the miraculous also."

"The harmonious man, it needs to be said, hardly exists at all; out of many tens, even hundreds of thousands perhaps one or two at most are encountered, and even then in rather feeble versions."

"The human able to tell the child everything. Everything. Often struck by the fact that parents do not know about their children very little. Do not have to hide them a lot because young children up to them fully aware that parents are hiding them many things because they see them too young to understand it! The possibility of children to provide advice on the most important things. How one can con this dear little birds when they are aspiring to him in confidence and kindness? I call them birds because there are not the world's most beautiful birds"

"The idea was by no means so stupid as it seems now that it has failed.... (Everything seems stupid when it fails.)"

"The impossible means the stone wall! What stone wall? Why, of course, the laws of nature, the deductions of natural science, mathematics. As soon as they prove to you, for instance, that you are de..."

"The impudence of Ignorance."

"The kinds of pain: that there is pain reduced our worth and decrease our destiny such as hunger, for example, People love in relation to this kind of pain to make themselves benefactors us later... But if the pain Increase the degree or two notches if the pain Nanmlh in the struggle for an idea, for example, people refuse to believe him but a few, and they do not believe him for that when they looked at the owner saw that his Council that the head, which must be in their head suffer in the cause of high all those greatness and they then refuse to empathize with him any sympathy without being in this position something of the spirit of evil, if at all."

"The laws of nature have continually all my life offended me more than anything."

"The liars Aeriqin who have been kept throughout their lives representing reach sometimes depth of the role that they represent that they edgy and crying, although their ability to say for themselves at the same time (or after a few minutes): You lie, O false honored! You represent, even in this moment, despite the anger Bible Despite these minute holy anger."

"The main feature of her life was a ceaseless error in humans."

"The man tends to create ways of creation and innovation, and this is an indisputable fact, but why have such a strong tendency rush to destruction and chaos also? Can you about that? However, I want to say a few things about this myself. Would not it be because the man loves chaos and destruction? (There is no doubt that he loves sometimes) because he fears an innate fear of receiving a goal and completed it for something that is built? And who knows? Perhaps loves man so if construction away from him I do not love him if close to the investigation"

"The man who has a conscience suffers whilst acknowledging his sin. That is his punishment."

"The marvel is that such an idea, the idea of the necessity of God, could enter the head of such a savage beast as man. So holy it is, so touching, so wise and so great a credit is to man."

"The men of those days...were absolutely not the same people that we are now; it was not the same race as now, in our age, really, it seems we are a different species...In those days they were men of one idea, but now we are more nervous, more developed, more sensitive; men capable of two or three ideas at once...Modern men are broader-minded - and I swear that this prevents their being so all-of-a-piece as they were in those days."

"The more conscious I was of goodness and of all that was 'sublime and beautiful’, the more deeply I sank into my mire and the more ready I was to sink in it altogether."

"The more I learned, the more conscious did I become of the fact that I was ridiculous. So that for me my years of hard work at the university seem in the end to have existed for the sole purpose of demonstrating and proving to me, the more deeply engrossed I became in my studies, that I was an utterly absurd person"

"The more I love humanity in general the less I love man in particular. In my dreams, I often make plans for the service of humanity, and perhaps I might actually face crucifixion if it were suddenly necessary. Yet I am incapable of living in the same room with anyone for two days together. I know from experience. As soon as anyone is near me, his personality disturbs me and restricts my freedom. In twenty-four hours I begin to hate the best of men: one because he’s too long over his dinner, another because he has a cold and keeps on blowing his nose. I become hostile to people the moment they come close to me. But it has always happened that the more I hate men individually the more I love humanity."

"The more stupid one is, the closer one is to reality. The more stupid one is, the clearer one is. Stupidity is brief and artless, while intelligence squirms and hides itself. Intelligence is unprincipled, but stupidity is honest and straightforward."

"The more you succeed in loving, the more you'll be convinced at the existence of God and the immortality of your soul."

"The most degrading cross has always produced the greatest glory and force, as long as the humility of the martyrdom is sincere. But do you have that humility? What you need is not a challenge but infinite humility and humiliation! You mustn't despise those who judge you, but believe in them sincerely, as in a great church; then you will triumph over them and turn them toward you by your example, and you will be united in love--ah, if only you could endure it!"

"The most important element we are not in the brain. However, on what our brains lead - the personality, heart, kindness, and progressive ideas."

"The most monstrous monster is the monster with noble feelings."

"The most pressing question on the problem of faith is whether a man as a civilized being… can believe in the divinity of the Son of God, Jesus Christ, for therein rests the whole of our faith."

"The most offensive is not their lying—one can always forgive lying—lying is a delightful thing, for it leads to truth—what is offensive is that they lie and worship their own lying…"

"The need to eat and drink is simply the instinct of self-preservation! - But do not think that instinct of self-preservation alone is important? But the instinct of self-preservation is the normal law of humanity- Who told you that? What is a law, there is no doubt. But it is more normal than the law of destruction, or even self-destructive. Think that self-preservation is the only law of the human species?"

"The night was wonderful - one of those nights as our youth alone knew. A starry firmament so, so calm, looking at it we asked involuntarily: Can it really exist in such a wicked beautiful sky?"

"The old grief of the great mystery of human life gradually passes into a quiet, tender joy; in place of the boiling blood of youth there comes a meek serene old age: I bless the daily rising of the sun, and my heart sings to it as it did of old, but now I am more enamored of its setting, its long, oblique rays, and the quiet, gentle, tender memories that accompany them, the dear images from the whole of a long and blessed life--and above it all the truth of God, moving, reconciling, all-forgiving!"

"The only gain of civilization for mankind is the greater capacity for variety of sensations - and absolutely nothing more."

"The other side of the pod alarm clock, one of the last breath, wheezing sounded like. Of course, this is not something where ousted the long wheeze like the high-pitched tone, followed by sounds pretty ugly. He stole two o'clock. Suddenly I came to myself, already deeply asleep, dozing off. A big wardrobe, scattered hither and thither hats, clothing boxes, lots of rags, dress fittings, narrow, flattened, dark room filled gorge. At one end of the room, came running out of part of the candle on the table. Gently from time to time. A few minutes later a complete mess buried in darkness. sobering power not everything is all of a sudden, easily, such as the opportunity to hit me in the head attack. Already before that, in a corner of my mind, I cannot erase a kind of sleepy, as if it were a fixed point around which my dreams: Oddly enough, what happened to me after waking up all that day, a long time ago, is already remembered as something done. My head was dizzy thoroughly. It's one thing to fly into me head on me, provokes, uneasy. Boredom and ambition swells in me again, looking for a way overflow. All of a sudden I saw a pair of eyes examined me and insisted me wonder. Overview, cold, indifferent, was focused entirely alien and human. Thought appeared in my head, and just as gloomy damp, stuffy, boring, feeling like I've heard an awful feeling that descends underground body spread. Black eyes begin to examine me, but now I was not sure at all. Mahlûkla not speak a word of it in two hours, I remembered I have not seen no need for that, even if I just liked this behavior. At that moment, where there is more than all their crudity and prostitution…"

"The owners of souls sensitive, delicate, thin sort of stubbornness sometimes, you see someone refuses to cross for the person who loves his love... you see someone refuses to cross for the person who loves him for his love, not only between people, but also in being alone more than among the people, and rarely get away from him courtesy, but that escaped the violent strong tidal a Anhbasha deal a long period of time."

"The painter Kramskoy has a remarkable painting entitled The Contemplator: it depicts a forest in winter, and in the forest, standing all by himself on the road, in deepest solitude, a stray little peasant in a ragged caftan and beast shoes; he stands as if he were lost in thought, but he is not thinking, he is contemplating something. If you nudged him, he would give a start and look at you as if he had just woken up, but without understanding anything. It's true that he would come to himself at once, and yet, if he were asked what he had been thinking about while standing there, he would most likely not remember, but would most likely keep hidden away in himself the impression he had been under while contemplating. These impressions are dear to him, and he is most likely storing them up imperceptibly and even without realizing it--why and what for, he does not know either; perhaps suddenly, having stored up his impressions over many years, he will drop everything and wander off to Jerusalem to save his soul, or perhaps he will suddenly burn down his native village, or perhaps he will do both. There are a good many contemplatives among our peasants. And Smerdyakov was probably one of them. And he was probably greedily hoarding up his impressions, hardly knowing why."

"The patients make fixed idea of the mouse mountain, and see many things where there's nothing at all!"

"The people who have nothing to lock up are the happy ones, aren't they?"

"The perpetration of a crime is accompanied by illness!"

"The piece of bread we seem to always bigger than they actually are when we see it in the hands of others"

"The main thing is not to lie. Who lies to yourself and give ear to his own lie comes to such an extreme that you cannot see any truth in them or those around you and therefore loses all respect for himself and others... Who lies to himself can be the first to take offense. Sometimes it's as nice a person to take offense, is not it? The individual knows that nobody swore that everything is simple invention that he just lied and exaggerated to create a framework to make a mountain of a grain - and knows all, however, is offended. Injury is done to the point feel happy on offense and thereby achieves the true hate."

"The pleasure of despair. But then, it is in despair that we find the most acute pleasure, especially when we are aware of the hopelessness of the situation."

"The poor girl was keeping that student's letter as a precious treasure, and had run to fetch it, her only treasure, because she did not want me to go away without knowing that she, too, was honestly and genuinely loved; that she, too, was addressed respectfully. No doubt that letter was destined to lie in her box and lead to nothing. But none the less, I am certain that she would keep it all her life as a precious treasure, as her pride and justification, and now at such a minute she had thought of that letter and brought it with naive pride to raise herself in my eyes that I might see, that I, too, might think well of her."

"The plague spread and moved on. In the whole world only a few people were able to save themselves: the pure and the chosen, predestined to begin a new race of men and a new life, to renew and purify the earth; but these people were not seen anywhere by anybody, and nobody heard their voices or their words."

"The mystery of human existence lies not in just staying alive, but in finding something to live for."